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Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Law - Changes to the Federal Register to make it more accessible - Part I

"A More Web-Friendly Register: With Federal Data in XML Form, Users Have New Options," is the headline to this story by Ed O'Keefe in Monday's Washington Post. The Federal Register as you are accustomed to reading it online will remain. But now, in addition:

Starting Monday, issues dating back to 2000 will be available at Data.gov in a form known in the Web world as XML, which allows users to transport data from a Web site and store it, reorganize it or customize it elsewhere. Officials suggested that the move puts readers, rather than the government, in charge of deciding how to access the Register's reams of information.

"In much the same way that newspapers have looked at making content more accessible by changing the print and typeface, we can now do the same thing by making the Federal Register available such that people can manipulate it and customize it and reuse the content to make the information even more accessible," said Beth Noveck, director of the White House Open Government Initiative.

So what does this mean to you? It means secondary views of viewing the data from the Federal Register may be more easily created by non-governmental sources. Here is are some quotes from a conversation Ed O'Keefe of the WAPO had with Carl Malamud, president of Public.Resource.Org, a group devoted to ensuring the online publication of public records, whose name you have seen before in the ILB:
"I've been very impressed. This really is a sea change, and very much for the better," he said in an e-mail.

Want proof? Malamud recommended GovPulse.us, a winner of the recent Apps for America competition. The site tracks agency activity in the Register with graphics, mapping and word clouds -- a much easier way to digest the Register's reams of information, until now only viewed online in lengthy pdf documents. GovPulse was built by three developers in their spare time who've had to screenscrape FederalRegister.gov to get all the data. The new XML format will make their jobs easier and the site "will really start to sing," Malamud said.

His group also built a test site: http://webchick.org/FRtoXML/ Notice the table of contents, color-coded regulations, cross-linking and links to maps of specific addresses? Before the XML capabilities, users could never have perused the Register in such fashion.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on October 7, 2009 09:58 AM
Posted to General Law Related